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RetroMo: The Atari Cosmos
Written by Robert Falcon on Tuesday, July 11, 2006
We take a look back at the surprisingly high-tech Atari handheld that never made it to market.
Handheld game systems these days are all about high technology. The Sony PSP is quite a savvy piece of hardware that shows the prowess of CD processing in a handy little UMD format. Not being a slouch is its competition, the Nintendo DS, which marvels with some amazing games and touch-screen capability that allows gamers to play their games in a completely different manner than they have before. But, believe it or not, this is not the first example of game companies fiddling with technology in a handheld system. In fact, the first example dates back to 1980, when Atari began work on an accompanying system to back up their Atari 2600.
The system was called the Atari Cosmos, and it was a system that was being developed to help take advantage of a holographic gaming technology that existed at the time. Holograms are basically 3-D visuals produced with a 2-D interface to give the illusion of 3-D. People had seen holograms before in posters and other images, and Atari knocked around the idea of producing a game system that could enable 3-D imagery into video games. The system used moving LED's to help produce a holographic image onto the screen, instead of flashing LED's that gave an artificial presentation like previous Coleco handheld systems.
The driving force that was to be the Cosmos' main processor was a chip called the COPS411. This is a similar CPU chip that would be used in an Entex Adventurevision tabletop game, producing similar visuals but never quite capturing the concept of the Cosmos. This basically allowed Cosmos cartridges to be simply manufactured with five touch points and a plastic shell. Atari knew this would be the key to the Cosmos' success- cheap games. They were expected to retail at roughly $10-$12 apiece.
In 1981, Atari engineeers Harry Jenkins, Roger Hector, and Al Alcorn showed off a Cosmos model at the New York Toy Fair, and, to their surprise, it began garnering big attention. Over 8,000 pre-orders had been dropped on the system, as the programmers explained the technology involved with the system and how it would change handheld gaming. It looked like it would be a huge up-swing for the company and a nice success like the Atari 2600 was at the time. However, the Cosmos would never come to fruition, due to the fact that the production hit a snag in terms of money.
An attempted run at production was supposed to produce 250 units, but it's not known if the system even began such a run. The funds involved with the project eventually ran out due to issues with the holographic technology, and Atari, trying to save a buck and stay alive in the game business, eventually took all the hardware that existed and closed up the lab. But another small reason could be that Atari had little faith in the handheld gaming market at the time, unsure of how a handheld would fare in a day and age of console gaming reaching an all-time high. As a result, the Cosmos was killed, and Alcorn ended up leaving the company.
So one of the most potentially interesting handheld systems to be never got its chance, due to problems with funding and a lack of faith in the company. However, the Cosmos has still been seen at numerous classic gaming expos, as three units supposedly exist today to wow classic gaming audiences and show that Atari had some good ideas up their sleeves before they eventually succumbed to the great Video Game Crash of 1983. It is not known if the units themselves are actually functioning, but one former Atari employee who was part of the project supposedly still has the cartridge with the eight games to have been showcased with it. Man, talk about your buried treasure...
See you next time on RetroMo! Thanks to Atari Museum (www.atarimuseum.com) for the assistance.
